Expert Sleepers

Plug-ins & modular synths

ES-5 "ES-3 Expander"

ES-5 - Introduction

It piggybacks on one of the ES-3's stereo channels to
provide eight gate/clock/sync/MIDI outputs on the ES-5
itself, plus further expansion headers to connect up to six
expansion modules e.g. the ES-4 Gate
Expander.

The front panel is drilled for both Doepfer and Analogue
Systems mounting holes (using a 'slot' rather than a single
round hole). The power connector is a Doepfer standard 16
way IDC, with -12V furthest from the top of the board.

Note that connection to the ES-3 is by a simple plug-in
cable for the ES-3 mk2 only. The original ES-3 requires
some soldering to add the required connections.

ES-5 mk2

From February 2014, the ES-5 is shipping
in a revised "mk2" form, matching the look of the ESX-8GT mk2. There are no functional
differences between the ES-5 mk1 and mk2.

Software Requirements

Unlike the ES-3 itself, the ES-5 requires particular
software in order to generate meaningful output signals.
Currently, the only such software is the 'ES-5 Controller'
plug-in, part of Expert Sleepers Silent Way, and our Max/MSP external
(see below).

Silent Way is available in AudioUnit and VST formats for
Mac OS X and Windows. Use of Silent Way therefore requires
a compatible host application (DAW). For Pro Tools users,
Silent Way is known to work with the FXpansion VST-RTAS
wrapper.

A Silent Way licence is not included with the ES-5 -
however, the ES-5 Controller plug-in functions in a
licence-free mode, so ES-5 users are not forced to buy
Silent Way. Such users can than evaluate the rest of the
Silent Way suite in demo mode.

Max/MSP External

We provide an
'external' for Max/MSP to enable users of Max to
easily integrate the ES-5 into their patchers. This
can be downloaded from the downloads page.